A litany for a pastor

The pastor of my parish, an Augustinian friar, died yesterday.  He was young, or least my age, which feels to me young. There will be a mass on Thursday at the parish, another on Friday at the Augustinian church on Villanova's campus.  I wrote the intercessions for Thursday's liturgy, reaching for the form of a litany, thinking, too, of a long ago theology grad school classmate and Dominican sister who would remind us that we should always be blessing.  May he be blessed, may we all be so blessed.

In baptism
John was marked with the cross, clothed in Christ,
and entrusted with the eternal light, undimmed in sharing.

        May that Light guide his way home.

In the Eucharist,
John was nourished by the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.

        May he be welcomed to the eternal feast in the halls of heaven.

In Holy Orders
John was anointed to sanctify God’s holy gifts for God’s holy people, a priest forever.

        May he now joyfully celebrate at the heavenly altar.

John tended the earthly gardens God entrusted to him with joy, tenderness, mercy and compassion.

        May the communities at Monsignor Bonner, Villanova, Maggie Valley and Our Mother of Good Counsel continue to grow in love and mercy.

        May the gardens he planted flourish for years to come.

For all who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith,
who await us in the heavenly kingdom.

        We pray.

Good luck with the raisins!

Good luck with the raisins!

The funeral for Uncle Norb was yesterday at the Mission (San Miguel Arcangel - founded in 1797, still in use as a parish church). The liturgy was well celebrated. We came back to the house to eat and talk. Between sandwiches and dessert my brother the Irreverent Reverend (brother #3) excuses himself from the table and his wife responds, "Good luck with the raisins!"

It's the punch line to a story about The Artistes (brother #2 and wife) where they take their leave from a breakfast table. The story, of course, must be now be retold for the benefit of the young ones, and newcomers. Once begun, the stories flow...old ones and new.

The newest is on me. I had asked my sister to read the Prayers of the Faithful and at dinner on Thursday (29 of us?!) had given her a copy. I did remember to mark up the copies for the first and second readings (Isaiah and Romans). However, I forgot to (1) mark the Prayer of the Faithful in the Rite, and therfore, failed to show my sister its location in said book and (far more critical) (2) did not mark up her practice copy. The set of intentions I selected included options for bishops/priests, religious, and laypersons. The text for the presider was also there (and not marked as such, you just gotta know, which I do, but my sainted sister does not).

At the proper time, Sainted Sister gets up, and I suddenly remember items (1) and (2). I'm trying to gesture to her to wait for the presider (who was wonderful about gently cuing everyone involved). She gets that I'm trying to tell her something, but not what, so decides she will just plunge ahead. She does. The presider lets her go. She reads the brief introduction. All is well, intention follows intention. Suddenly I hear her say, "for our brother Norbert, bishop and priest...." Oh. No.

You can hear a pin drop in the place, but we are well trained. She says, "we pray to the Lord." We respond, "Lord, hear our prayer." I'm wincing, waiting for her to go on to the one about religious, but the presider smoothly retrieves the strands and launches into the concluding prayer.

I apologize at the end of Mass, but by now my brothers have hold of the tale (and my tail) and are lovingly describing (and embellishing) the expressions that swept across my face as this whole thing goes down.

Lord, hear my prayer.

Column: Pray the Everyday Every Day

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 14 May 2009.

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. — Dt. 6:5-9


“Lois Anne,” suggested Sister in a stage whisper, “that’s enough.”

The child was firm in her response. “I don’t want it to fall off,” she told her principal as she continued to wrap the wires around the statue’s head. Even the invocation of her middle name left her undaunted in her devotion.

Long before I unearthed the black and white photo in my parents’ spare room, I’d heard the whole story. The photo is dated 1939 and shows a determined little girl in a white dress and veil standing on ladder before a sea of other veiled heads, crowning a statue of Mary. The little girl is my mother; a quarter century later I would don that same veil on a Marian feast for my own first Communion.

Fifty years later my mother still marveled that Sister would leave Mary’s corona vulnerable to the vagaries of wind and balls tossed in the school courtyard. Personally I marveled at my mother’s clearly longstanding determination to make what was in her heart — her deep and full love of God — visible. To wear it ‘bound at her wrist and written on her doorpost,’ as the Israelites were advised to do.

My theological library owes its start to my mother, who read the documents of Vatican II as avidly as she did the latest science fiction novel. Yet there was always a rosary to be found in her purse, and she never failed of saying grace at a meal, even when it was just the two of us in her hospital room. Faith was not just an academic stance for my mother; it was her whole way of being.

Jesuit Father Karl Rahner, one of the most eminent theologians of the 20th century, made Deuteronomy’s injunction manifest in his own preaching and life. He once cautioned a student, “Beware the person of no devotions and the person who does not pray.” Rahner himself often sat praying the rosary as someone read for an audience a translation of one of his complex theological papers.

In Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the Church reminds us that our devotions “should accord with the sacred Liturgy ... [and] in some way derive from it, and lead people to it, since in fact the Liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any of them.” Our personal and community devotions are meant to grow from what is sown at the celebration of the Eucharist. Like physical exercise, they are intended to sharpen our appetite for the Eucharistic table.

In his short book, “The Need and the Blessing of Prayer” Father Rahner commends the little devotions of life: the rosary, marking a child with the Sign of the Cross each night, making the Sign of the Cross before cutting a loaf of bread.

Prayer is a grace but also requires practice on our part. These small acknowledgements of God, our pious practices, can give some structure to our daily practice of prayer. He sums up his advice, “Pray every day and pray the everyday.”

As the summer approaches, with its temptingly unstructured days, I ask myself how will I respond to God’s love: at home and abroad, whether busy or at rest? How can I pray the everyday every day, so that I might hunger all the more for God? What is written on my doorposts for my children to see?

---

Holy Mary, pray for us.
Holy Mother of God, pray for us.
Most honored of virgins, pray for us.
Chosen daughter of the Father, pray for us.
Mother of Christ the King, pray for us.
Glory of the Holy Spirit, pray for us.
Amen. — from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Woman on the edge

"She's a woman on the edge," I hear my surgeon say, as in scooting onto the operating table, I missed the mark and nearly went spilling onto the floor. She, the anesthesiologist and I had been talking about quantum mechanics on the way to the OR. I'm dressed in a Bair Paws gown (a very funky outfit that allows them to plug you into a warming hose and stay warm before surgery - it reminded me of when I was small, living outside of Chicago, and would stand in my nightgown on the hot air vents in the living room floor to get warm on winter mornings) and am wearing a silver hat also designed to help me retain heat (the nurse called it a Jiffy Pop hat and it's an apt description). The 6-ft plus anesthesiologist is holding my IV high in the air, towering over both me and the surgeon. We must have made quite a procession.

I was trying so hard not to be nervous, but when they hooked me up to the monitors, my secret was out. My usual pulse rate is between 60 and 65 - in the OR? 102. The last things I remember as I went under, were my surgeon holding my hand, and of praying the litany of the saints. Next thing I know, I'm in the recovery room - with a big sticker on my gown that said "Star Patient". I still don't know what I did to deserve that, since I proceeded to feel very "high maintenance" in the recovery unit. Suffice it to say I was glad of modern chemistry and medicine, and of a good friend willing to sit there through it all.

The team at home was sweet in their own ways. I woke to find a tray placed on the bed next to me, with a bowl of mashed potatoes and a cold drink (no napkin - we're talking men in the kitchen). Math Man had to go to back-to-school night for the mandatory choral meeting, so the boys reminded me how to use the cordless phones as an intercom system, in case I needed anything.

Since I'd sworn to the discharge nurse I would not get up without a spotter, when I needed to use the bathroom, I called up Barnacle Boy - who very gently took my arm. Then he pops out with "I don't have to say in there with you, do I??" "No sweetheart..." all the while thinking of those years not so long ago when he'd come popping right in the bathroom door without knocking, or decide to chat me up while I was in the shower. I think he's growing up!

Later, Barnacle Boy decided that the cat sleeping on top of me was photo material, grabbed my camera and clicked away. This morning I looked - the cat is indeed cute, I on the other hand look like something the cat dragged in.

Litany of litanies

Barnacle Boy's hamster's departure from this earth left a little hole in his heart, I've discovered.

I wrote a piece for this week's Catholic Standard and Times on litanies, prodded by a spate of litanies. First there was Stratoz, praying his way through an anxious morning, then I spent an uncomfortable few minutes on an examining table praying the litany of the saints. The next morning, as we chatted over breakfast preparations, Math Man recounted the poem he'd heard on NPR. "It had this interesting structure, a back and forth...I can't quite remember what they called it." "A litany?" Got it in one. And I got the message. Maybe I should write about litanies?

You can read the piece here (and and then perhaps the photo will make sense...)

On the way home from school today I mentioned to the Boy that I'd written about him, and about Rufus. "Is it about that day?" he inquired. "The day Rufus.." He stops me. "Nope! It makes me sad."

Requiescat In Pacem, Rufus

Saturday night Barnacle Boy appeared in the kitchen distressed, "I think Rufus is dead, Mom." Rufus is his hamster. "What makes you think that?" "He didn't eat dinner and he's not breathing." Rufus is downright ancient for a hamster, and doesn't always wake up for dinner, so this would not in general worry me. The not breathing, however, is a tip-off. The Boy is right, Rufus has indeed gone on to the next life where he'll always have dried papaya and a wheel that doesn't squeak. We take the cage out to the garage and I promise to help him take care of Rufus in the morning (we're having a thunderstorm!).

The next morning, we consign Rufus to the earth. Last summer my director (a Jesuit priest) had told me about the 6-yr-old son of friends, who'd called him to try to convince him to come help him bury his fish. Four phone calls later, he'd promised to construct a service and phone in to preside. He took the canticle of the three men in the furnance from Daniel and converted it to a litany (All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord). We did the same. There were tears, but litany as a form seems to weave something healing around you, and it seemed to have channelled the grace in this case, too.